She's not allowed to walk to school

Joan Ryan

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, October 21, 2003

It is 5:50 a.m. Rivera Street is dark except for the light from 14- year-old's upstairs bedroom. School doesn't start for another two hours. And Lincoln High School is so close, Lona can see it from her window.

But Lona doesn't go to Lincoln. She travels clear across the city to Galileo High School, a lower-performing school near Fisherman's Wharf. She is not attending Galileo by choice. She is one of the many students who didn't contribute enough of the right demographic factors to be assigned to their neighborhood schools as determined by the San Francisco school district's "diversity index."

Lona pulls on jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, brushes her teeth and gathers her long black hair into a ponytail. In the kitchen, she downs a pork- filled bun and a glass of juice. Her father, John, leans against the stove, watching his only daughter. He scraped to buy a house last year in the Sunset District -- he is a cook, his wife works in a bank -- and now his daughter can't attend the well-respected school that is walking distance away.

"I want every kid to have a fair chance, not just my daughter," he says. And for him that means strong neighborhood schools for everyone.

Zhao has been one of the most outspoken opponents of busing students all over the city to achieve a goal he believes is no longer relevant. The focus, Zhao and others say, should not be diversity but quality. Recent reports suggest that parents of all ethnic backgrounds would rather send their children to neighborhood schools if the schools were equal in quality to the rest of the district's schools, even if that meant less diversity.

The problem, of course, is that all schools aren't equal. Schools in the poorer, more heavily African American and Latino neighborhoods are lower- performing and more poorly maintained. So, diversity advocates reasonably argue, it isn't fair to those children to be subjected to an inferior education simply because they can't afford to live in the middle- and upper- middle class neighborhoods with the better schools.

Zhao gets that. He says he is not a racist. He does not oppose African American and Latino students attending his neighborhood's school. Indeed, he says Chinese American, African American and Latino parents are all striving for the same goal: a solid education for their children. But why, Zhao wants to know, doesn't the school district redirect resources instead of children to lift the low-performing schools?

"This is not a Chinese issue," Zhao says, taking the empty juice glass from his daughter. "It's a neighborhood issue. He should spend the time, effort and money to build up the east side schools so all kids have good schools close to home."

The school district says it is pouring more resources into failing schools. But in the meantime, if all students attended the schools closest to their homes, then San Francisco's schools would be resegregated, and African American and Latino students would be stuck in the worst schools. And it would violate a federal court order dating back 20 years that required the district to desegregate. Indeed, it was that court order that eventually led to the creation of the now-controversial diversity index.

The desegregation plan two decades ago established "racial caps," which set a maximum racial enrollment of 45 percent at the most desirable schools. Several years ago, a group of Chinese American parents sued the district, saying the racial cap not only kept many of their children out of the top public schools, it prevented many from attending of their neighborhood schools as well. The diversity index was created in 2002 as a part of the settlement of that suit.

In the hallway by the kitchen, Lona isn't thinking about diversity or lawsuits or anything except trying to keep her eyes open. She stuffs her books into her backpack: biology, world literature, integrated math. The first week of school her father drove her to Galileo. The second week, her mother accompanied her on Muni so she could learn the 90-minute, one-transfer route. "She had never taken the bus that far on her own," Zhao said.

Then the district began providing a school bus from the Sunset and Richmond districts as a way of mollifying the Chinese American parents. Though Zhao is grateful for the gesture, he says all students assigned outside their neighborhoods should have school buses.

"If you think sending kids across the city is the right thing, then provide transportation," Zhao said. "It's unfair to provide it for some and not for others."

It is 6:30 and still dark. Lona heads out of the house, walks two blocks to Taraval, then up seven blocks to 30th. She says she likes Galileo. She is social vice president for the freshman class and plays on the volleyball team. "I've made a lot of friends," she says. The school bus arrives at 6:55. Lona and a girlfriend take a seat in the back. "My brain isn't registering yet," Lona says.

The bus stops twice more before leaving the Sunset District, then once again in the Richmond.

Forty minutes later, it pulls up to Galileo.

Lona has volleyball practice after school, which means she'll miss the school bus home. She'll have to take the 49 to Van Ness, then the L car to Taraval. The ride will take 1 1/2 hours. She'll do some reading for world lit.

I wonder, as I watch Lona's travels, how to figure out what price a child ought to pay in the service of society's ideals. I don't come up with an answer.

When Lona walks from the Muni stop, her sagging backpack slung across her shoulders, Rivera Street will again be dark.